Coach Ben VomBaur has Bear Cave Wrestlers on the fast track to success

Equipped with a 12-passenger and a 15-passenger van, coach Ben VomBaur and his wife, Kelli, take Bear Cave wrestlers all across the region — and even as far as Atlanta — to compete.

“The unique thing about us is that we have two vans and we travel a lot more than your standard club,” VomBaur said. “We go out of state a lot and we try to make it affordable to go out and find good competition.”

In a calender year, wrestlers from Bear Cave have the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas, Fargo, N.D., Tulsa, Okla., Pocatello, Idaho, and Dodge City, Kan., as well as Wisconsin, Utah and Nebraska.

That is a far cry from when VomBaur started Bear Cave six years ago while working as an assistant wrestling coach at UNC.

“It just started off small as a way to connect and give back to the community,” VomBaur said. “And it’s turned into a full-time business with the ability to impact a lot more kids at a lot more age groups.”

Bear Cave now has over 150 wrestlers compete throughout the year, ranging from as young as 6 to as old as 18.

Of those 150, 20 competed at national tournaments last year, with five bringing back national championships to Northern Colorado.

Vance VomBaur — Ben’s son — won national titles in both freestyle and Greco-Roman at Kids Nationals. Vance also won the freestyle Pan American Championships on Saturday in Chile, and was named the outstanding wrestler of the tournament.

Cody Thompson and Dominick Serrano — who won a high school state wrestling title this past February — qualified as All-Americans in both at Cadet Nationals.

“It was nervewracking,” Serrano said of his time in Fargo. “But I had Ben by my side and he knows my style and how to calm me down. I’m more comfortable and wrestle smarter when he’s there.”

With 150 wrestlers to oversee, it would be easy to lose some in the mix. But that ability to connect with his wrestlers may be what sets VomBaur apart.

“Whether you’re 6 years old or whether you’re in high school, it’s nice when the coach knows your name and can talk about something in your life,” VomBaur said. “I know that made a difference with my coaches growing up.”

While his communication is second-to-none, his wrestling knowledge isn’t far behind.

No matter the age group, he preaches good technique. And fundamentals are key.

“Since I started (working with VomBaur) my endurance has improved a lot and I’ve felt a lot more clean with shots,” Serrano said. “I’ve started to perfect everything. Focus on the basics and fine tune them.”

Those basics led Serrano to a 50-0 record and a 120-pound state title his freshman year at Windsor. It also got Bear Cave recognized as the top elite club in America by Trackwrestling.com.

Trackwrestling has a ranking system that gives each wrestler a number based on results and difficulty of recent tournaments. Then it takes the average of the top wrestlers in a club to calculate a club score.

“We’re building good wrestlers,” VomBaur said. “We’re building wrestlers who will be successful in high school and college and hopefully their lives.”

Another way he does that is by putting on camps at his home outside Greeley throughout the summer.

With multiple wrestling rooms and plenty of open space, VomBaur places as much focus on having fun as he does on wrestling.

Between training sessions, campers compete at everything from cornhole to ping-pong to frisbee golf.

“It’s so fun to do what you love and then in the off-time playing paintball and going fishing and camping with your friends,” Serrano said.

But in the end, no matter how big the club grows, VomBaur’s reason for doing it remains the same.

“Wrestling kept me out of a lot of trouble and really straightened me out,” he said. “It gave me something to focus on and gave me a lot of confidence in life and I had some great coaches. That had always been something I have wanted to give back and help young people.”